Assessing Mental Health for China’s Police: Psychometric Features of the Self-Rating Depression Scale and Symptom Checklist 90-Revised

I-Hua Chen, Chung-Ying Lin, Xia Zheng and Mark D. Griffiths
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I-Hua Chen: College of Education Science, Minnan Normal University, Zhangzhou 363000, China
Chung-Ying Lin: Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, Faculty of Health and Social Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong
Xia Zheng: Mental-Health Education Center, Nanchang University, Nanchang 330000, China
Mark D. Griffiths: International Gaming Research Unit, Psychology Department, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham NG1 4FQ, UK

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 8, 1-17

Abstract: Police mental health is important because police officers usually encounter stressors that cause high levels of stress. In order to better understand mental health for Chinese police, the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS) and Symptom Checklist 90-Revised (SCL-90-R) are commonly used in mainland China. Unfortunately, both the SDS and SCL-90-R lack detailed information on their psychometric properties. More specifically, factor structures of the SDS and SCL-90-R have yet to be confirmed among the police population in mainland China. Therefore, the present study compared several factor structures of the SDS and SCL-90-R proposed by prior research and to determine an appropriate structure for the police population. Utilizing cluster sampling, 1151 traffic police officers (1047 males; mean age = 36.6 years [SD = 6.10]) from 49 traffic police units in Jiangxi Province (China) participated in this study. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with Akaike information criterion (AIC) was used to decide the best fit structure. In the SDS, the three-factor model (first posited by Kitamura et al.) had the smallest AIC and outperformed other models. In the SCL-90-R, the eight-factor model had the smallest AIC and outperformed the one-factor and nine-factor models. CFA fit indices also showed that both the three-factor model in the SDS and the eight-factor model in the SCL-90-R had satisfactory fit. The present study’s results support the use of both SDS and SCL-90-R for police officers in mainland China.

Keywords: Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale (Zung SDS); Symptom Checklist (SCL-90-R); psychometrics; police; police mental health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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